Cocktails & Convos with
Zoë Fay-Stindt
Celebrate Ames’ own Zoë Fay-Stindt as they read from their new chapbook Bird Body on Wednesday, October 5, at 7 PM. This book of poetry explores pain and healing, “what it means to have a body and what it means to trust the world with it,” and the role of connectedness in it all.
Alongside this thoughtful and moving chapbook, Dog-Eared Books will sell special Honey Ginger Heron cocktails/mocktails, and the author has arranged a line up of short readings from other local poets to make the event even more special.
We hope to see you there!
WHEN: Wednesday, October 5, 7 PM
WHERE: Dog-Eared Books
Bird Body by Zoë Fay-Stindt
Bird Body offers powerful, complex, and incisive glimpses into the tensions that lie at the heart of survivorship. “Everyone wants you to stop writing / about it, this unkillable thing, enough, enough. / You have been loved, yes, / you are fortunate,” she writes, pushing back against demands that society makes of survivors: don’t speak, stay open, forgive, be grateful, move on. This forceful debut investigates virtue and shame, asking, “what use does good have / in this old world? And what shade of it are you // today?”
Fay-Stindt’s work resists easy conclusions, encouraging us to hold space for trauma and ambiguous grief alongside “every earthly wonder.” Many survivors will recognize their experiences in these poems. This chapbook is a form of care and advocacy that refuses shame and prioritizes connection. Art that addresses trauma shouldn’t have to be beautiful—just to tell one’s story is enough—but Bird Body is, and I cannot imagine a greater gift.
Zoë Fay-Stindt (she/they) is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Their poetry has appeared in museum galleries, on the radio, on the streets of small towns, in community farm newsletters, and other strange and wonderful places. Her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been featured or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities, Ninth Letter, and Poet Lore, among others. You can learn more at www.zoefaystindt.com.
